Posting for D, we visited these schools this past Summer in the following order:
Down-- Princeton: she didn’t like the suburban location, the eating club, she had concern about their social life in general. She fell asleep during the presentation and didn’t even want to wait for the tour (she did the tour several years ago when an older brother applied). So, we just walked through the campus as a self tour and left.
Up++ UPenn: the tour guide was so friendly and helpful. The college presentation was very useful and informative. It became D’s top choice until she visited Yale. She liked the location (Philadelphia) and the campus and the Locust Walk and the Quadrangle. At first she liked the quad (dorm), but later had some concern about housing and roommate arrangements. But at the time of application, UPenn was one of her top choices and she showed it in her essays and interview.
Up+++ Yale: the college presentation was very helpful and funny. The tour guide was so friendly and helpful about everything - student life, academics, residential college, extracurriculars, etc… My D fell in love with the school right away and it became her top choice. Especially liked the residential college system, their inclusive culture (very very important to my D), and the fact that all students have no worries about housing arrangement for four years and the food seemed to be very good too. My D wants to be in premed and the tour guide was also a premed, but she was still heavily involved in several extracurriculars as a ballet dancer and other things. She liked the campus location in New Haven.
Down-- Brown: the orientation building was in heavy construction, struggled to find room for the college presentation. The presentation was done by two undergraduate students, talking about the open curriculum, and everything seemed disorganized. We felt that the lack of structure of open curriculum is confusing and did not like it any better than tough core curriculum (such as of Columbia or Caltech). The tour guide was friendly, but the whole thing (presentation and tour) felt utterly disorganized and my D didn’t like the experience at all - she didn’t like the campus. Everything just appeared in disarray for this visit: construction, college presentation by undergrad students not by admission staff, open curriculum without any structure - each student makes up their own curriculum, all courses could be taken as Pass/Fail, etc.
No-change: Williams: although the location was a minus, surrounded by mountains and isolated, the tour guide was nice and informative.
No-change to Down- Amherst: Both the presentation and tour guide were very helpful. She didn’t like the campus as much, but she liked very much the large freshman dorm room. They made a big deal about the four-college consortium (with UMass and a couple of others) but she felt uneasy about it, especially taking courses in other colleges.
Up+ MIT - the tour guide was funny and helpful. The presentation was not that useful in which they made a big deal about rejecting an applicant who built a nuclear reactor in his garage. But D liked the campus and the gym, the pool especially. The housing was a bit of concern.
Down-- Harvard: The college presentation was arrogant. They emphasized the applicants should be nice people. But they were not very nice themselves as the tour guide and the college presenter were snobbish. The campus seemed non-existent with busy traffic, large street and many tourists. Didn’t like the visit experience at all.
Down- Dartmouth: The college presentation and tour guide were nice and informative (although the guide seemed inexperienced and said the same thing repeatedly). The location was a huge minus, too isolated from everywhere. Felt uneasy about their one Summer term requirement and the term away from campus.
Up+ Cornell: The presentation was somewhat boring, but the tour guide was very nice and helpful. The campus was beautiful. Before visit, D didn’t think much of it, but after the visit, Cornell became one of her favorites (after Yale and UPenn). Although their University organization is somewhat negative (with CALS, Hotel, ILS?, etc.), she didn’t mind it at all because she wanted to apply to Arts and Sciences from the beginning. The tour guide did a good job introducing the large campus and various colleges effectively while walking the group though most of the beautiful campus.
